A Better World, page 27
“Dr. Chernin?” the nurse called. “I need help with the catheter.”
Chernin pulled back. His eyes went distant with that spaciness she’d come to expect. He retreated someplace, like a floater picked clean by scavengers until all that’s left is heavy bone.
Without saying good-bye, he shut the door.
* * *
Home, Linda went. Still early, she climbed into bed and stayed there. Even after the sun shone through the windows, the Farmer-Bowen house stayed quiet. It carried the musty emotional charge of an unwound clock.
“Honey. It’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you. But can we do some damage repair?” Russell asked around noon. He stood in the doorway of their bedroom, his shadow long. Despite their soft delivery, his words felt like an accusation. “Heinrich told me the board wants a written apology.”
“Later,” she said.
He spent the day working in his increasingly chaotic office.
Hip and Josie stayed in their rooms. When they came out, she didn’t hear wrestling in the kitchen or laughter at the way one or the other garnished toast. There were no funny voices, no jitterbug delights.
In the early evening, Hip brought her a glass of juice. Are you okay, Mom? he asked as she lay open eyed in bed, too upset to sleep. They said you weren’t supposed to drink that stuff. Why did you drink that stuff?
Close the door, she told him.
The Dump
By morning, staying in bed required more energy than getting up. She was already dressed and trying to figure out what to possibly do next when Josie knocked.
“What is it, hon?”
Shoulders hunched, Josie padded barefoot into the room. “Can we leave Plymouth Valley? Is it allowed?”
Linda misunderstood. I want to, she thought. But how do we get the rest of the family to come with us?
Josie clarified. “Could you take me to the dump? I want to find that snow globe.”
* * *
At the gate, Sally checked the car for contraband and found none. Linda couldn’t tell if it was the lingering effect of the psilocybin, or just her mental state, but she and the world were out of synchronicity, like ballerinas on separate music boxes, spinning at different speeds.
“Hey, good-lookin’. You really tied one on at Parson’s party, huh?”
“Yeah,” Linda said.
“Got everybody worked up,” Sally said without smiling. When a dumb person stops smiling, you suddenly realize they’re not as harmless as you’d thought.
“Did I? I drank the wine. It was a bad idea.”
Cheerless, Sally held on to Linda for an extra beat. “You’re not working at the clinic today. Why are you here?”
“We threw something out by accident. We want to go to the dump. See if we can find it.”
“What did you throw out?” Sally asked.
Maybe they weren’t allowed out without a reason. But that didn’t make sense. The Farmer-Bowens weren’t essential. People would literally kill to have their spots here. “A family heirloom. Do you know where the dump is at?”
With much less cordiality than Linda was accustomed to, Sally gave directions. It was three kilometers past PVE, on an unmarked road. She also pulled two gas masks from her booth, logged them as borrowed, and handed them to Linda. “You’ll want these. It’s stinky as poop!”
With that, they left PV. It was easy, Linda suddenly realized. This place wasn’t a prison. She could leave with her whole family any time. She could pack up and go.
* * *
The air today was cleaner than usual because of a recent snow. Linda’s sinuses didn’t instantaneously clog, nor did she feel the need to don a mask.
The ride was quiet. Linda’s conversational openers had been misfiring for months. She had no confidence she’d say the right thing this time, either. “I had a bad day yesterday. I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
Josie dead-eyed straight ahead. When kids are little, you do so much together that your thoughts are often in lockstep. You know what they’re thinking. Then they get older, and they look like adults. It’s right and healthy that they should separate, but the access you once had to them is gone. Sometimes, they even seem like strangers.
“I felt overwhelmed,” Linda said to this pained young woman sitting shotgun.
“Oh,” Josie said. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.”
“I didn’t mean to yell at you about the snow globe. That was an accident. I was upset.”
Josie sniffled, looked at her hands. Linda appreciated that they were driving in a car past so much snow, and not trying to have this conversation while sitting inside that big house at 9 Sunset Heights. It felt safer here.
“You’re not spoiled. Or if you are, you don’t act it.”
Josie rolled the window a crack, breathed the frigid air.
“And maybe you’re right. Maybe I do treat you differently. Maybe I treat myself differently. When you’re living a thing sometimes you’re too close to know.”
Josie didn’t answer for a while. Linda looked ahead at the snow, the small houses, the salt on the road that kept her tires from skidding. With the open window, their breath fogged the air. “It was a good snow globe,” Josie said at last.
“I’d put it at medium to junky with high sentimental value,” Linda answered.
They passed the clinic and went down the small main street, the run-down and shuttered stores. Josie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why did you leave me alone on New Year’s Eve?”
They passed the last store, Diem’s Auto, and were on the road going opposite the highway. Only one lane had been plowed. There wasn’t any place to pull over. But it was an early weekend morning. There weren’t other cars around. Linda cut the engine and stopped right there.
“I made a mistake,” she said.
“Oh,” Josie said.
“It’s hard to know the right thing to do in the moment. I didn’t know. I felt bad all night. I wanted to come back to you.” She was tempted to add, Daddy and Hip, too. We all missed you. But Josie would smell the lie. She wouldn’t see it as a kindness. She’d see it as an insult. “You have to tell me what you want, Josie. I can’t always think of it. If you’d told me, I’d have stayed.”
“You were mad at me,” Josie said. And then, eyes scrunched tight: “I know I should tell you. But I don’t know what I want.”
The cold air felt good. PV was oppressive. Its walls were oppressive. The people were oppressive. Even the air, cycled through vents, tasted both fresh and dead, like a recording of music instead of the real thing.
“What’s going on with you?” Linda asked. “Can you try to tell me?”
Josie pursed her thin lips and seemed to think. Then she did try, and Linda had the idea it wasn’t because she’d said anything right. It was necessity. Things couldn’t go on as they had been going. Josie had to tell someone. “It’s like I’m not here. Like, I can see everything. I can see me, but it’s not me. Sometimes it’s like… like my heart.”
“What about your heart?”
“It’s beating too fast. I think I’m dying. But I know I’m not. I never was like this back home. I’m going crazy.”
Linda’s eyes watered. She’d been crying a lot lately, and on every occasion, it had happened because she’d learned something new and disquieting about this town. It had felt like carrying a heavy weight that kept getting heavier, until yesterday, when the weight had sunk her and she’d stayed in bed. This time, with her daughter, her tears didn’t feel like a weight. They felt like a release.
“God, Josie. You’re not crazy. It’s this place. Crazy is the only sane reaction.”
“No one likes me,” she said.
“From what you say, they suck, so you’re better off.”
“No. Not them. They don’t matter. Hip doesn’t like me. And Dad doesn’t.”
“No,” Linda said. “Hip’s in girlfriend land. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. And your dad, he shows his feelings differently. He wants to succeed for all our sakes. He doesn’t have room to think about much else.”
“I know all that,” Josie said, tears falling down her cheeks to her lips. “But isn’t that the same as not liking me?”
“They like you. They love you. They’re just being mediocre relatives right now. I probably shouldn’t judge. I’ve had my selfish phases… I wasn’t mad at you the other night. I was scared,” she said.
“Why?”
“I need you,” Linda said at last. “It’s not fair to tell you that. I’m supposed to tell you that I care about you and I’m trying to reach you because I want to save you or something. That’s what a normal parent would say. My mom and dad used to tell me they needed me, and I hated it, because it meant I had to take care of them. I never got to be a kid, or a person, really. I was a crutch. They never considered me. So, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to take care of me, but I do need you. I’ve always felt we understood each other. It makes everything okay, when someone understands you. Hip’s busy and you had your finger on something when you said your dad gets away with things. It hit a nerve, I guess.
“It’s wrong I’m telling you this. I know I shouldn’t. I’m sorry already, but I don’t think he’s ever understood me. Feelings aren’t his thing. He’s good in other ways… People aren’t perfect. We have these notions they’re supposed to be perfect, but they’re not. I got scared because since we moved here, I keep losing you. I can’t find you. I don’t know where you’ve gone. I come to your room every night thinking you’ll be there and I won’t be alone anymore. I can’t stand these phonies and I’m pretending. I’m forcing myself so you can live in a better world, and I get home and all I want is to be with all of you. But Hip’s someplace else. He’s bought in. He’s becoming one of them. And your dad’s so haunted by the possibility of failure he can’t see straight. He’s this genius and it’s never worked for him until now. No one ever saw it except the people here. And then there’s you. And I go to you. It’s so scary when you look at me like you can’t stand me.”
She’d been searching for the right words for a very long time. These felt like the opposite of that. Too adult. Too selfish.
Josie unbuckled. Scooted over. “Oh, Mom,” she said. Linda held her tight, like she’d done a long time ago, when her daughter had still been small.
* * *
Linda suggested that they turn back around. She didn’t care that much about the snow globe, anyway. But neither wanted to return so soon to PV. They drove on, smelling the dump before they saw it. It wasn’t rotting organic material, like she’d expected. It was chemical: ammonia and burnt protein.
They’d both worn old clothes—jeans and boots with rubber soles. Helping each other, they walked across the modest and very odd garbage pile. About a half a kilometer around, its mound was only about six meters high. The whole thing was caked in green sludge.
“I feel like an astronaut,” Linda said, trudging through muck that suctioned her feet.
“What is this?” Josie asked. She’d stuffed her hair into a ponytail, and her voice both echoed and dampened through the rubbery gas mask.
“Omnium disposal. But it’s supposed to be separated from the other trash so there’s no contamination. This is not separated.”
“That snow globe’s all sad. It’s like: ‘What did I do wrong?’ ” Josie said in her old, jokey way. “ ‘Why did that mean girl throw me into a toxic waste site?’ ” Her mood had picked up since their talk, and as they walked, they stood close. Linda’d missed that closeness, their old banter. She felt lovesick at its return.
“It’s inanimate,” Linda said, game and cheerful. “It’s like: ‘I’m glad I’m not sentient or I’d be worried about the future of my existence.’ ”
“It’s like: ‘What is snow, anyway? And why is my representational snow just synthetic?’ ” Josie said.
They both looked across the landscape, green goop and garbage. It would be hard to find a small snow globe here.
“I really am sorry, Mom,” Josie said. “It was a spoiled brat thing to do.”
“I’m done caring about it,” Linda answered.
The place was empty and surrounded by emptiness. There wasn’t any organic material here—PV and PVE both composted that more locally. So, birds didn’t swoop to feed. Rats didn’t scavenge. Through the gaps in her mask, it smelled like burning tires and ammonia. It smelled wrong. She thought of those kids, those disease indices, wondered how much contamination was too much.
“Coming here was a mistake. Let’s go,” Linda said. “We can take showers at my clinic.”
Josie ignored her and strode for the center of the pile, where it looked like the most recent truck had deposited its load. This was mostly Omnium material, but also junk like old chairs and bikes and Christmas-present rejects. Household items and bleach, too. So, chlorine. Right here, alongside Omnium and GREEN.
“Stop!” Linda’s panicked voice was raised so Josie could hear it through her mask.
“I’m finding that snow globe,” Josie called back.
“It’s not worth it.”
Josie kept going, traversing the muck. The generally-recognized-as-safe green slurry, chemical-scented muck.
“Screw it, Josie. There’s only one thing here that I want and it’s you.”
* * *
They drove to the clinic, used the office bathroom, which had a shower. Linda put all their clothing, including their boots, into Omnium shrink bags like it was a biohazard. Maybe it was. They wore hospital gowns and sat at the staff kitchen table. Both were hungry, but there wasn’t any food.
“We could go to the Quik-Bite, but I think they only take credit,” Linda said.
“How much credit do you have?” Josie asked.
Linda mimed searching for pockets, coming back with nothing, then understood that the question was more open ended. “We’re broke. This move cost everything.”
“That’s okay,” Josie reassured. “We’ll figure something out.” It wasn’t the typical Josie thing to say. Back home, she’d have whined and told Linda to figure it out because she was hungry. But she’d changed. Life there had shaved away her arrogance and girlish giggles.
She remembered Glamp, then. The way she’d been a kid one day, a woman the next. Or, she’d lived a woman’s life inside the mind of a child. “It occurs to me I should ask: Is anything happening to you? Is anyone hurting you?”
Josie shook her head. “Not like how you mean.”
“Then how?”
Josie picked up the pepper shaker, poured a sprinkling into her palm, and licked it. “I don’t know. The houses, they’re all the same. The people are all the same. I keep picking stuff up—the dishes and couch cushions. I look under the tables, the bed. I keep thinking they’re not real. They’re like, props. At school, after every test the kids are like: What’d you get? What’d you get? Every weekend it’s like: Where’d you go? Who’d you hang out with? How far is your daddy or mommy from a golden ticket? I’m third generation, except I sound like a dumbass because I don’t cuss. I’m all scatological and can only say poop! I’m so special. My parents got their tickets early because they do side jobs. We’re all so frigging special. And it’s like, do you realize the goddamned ocean just drowned the Maldives? Fuck you, dude. And seriously, what are these side jobs? Are these families all hookers?”
Linda gave her a look, like, Maybe. They might be hookers. “It’s the same thing for me with ActHollow. My job isn’t to be a doctor. It’s to make them look good,” Linda said, raising her arms to indicate the clinic. “We don’t have enough patients. The patients we do have, we can’t adequately treat.”
“That must piss you off,” Josie said.
“I’ve been in denial. I couldn’t admit it until now. Nobody to admit it to.”
“I wanted to like this place,” Josie said. She’d wrapped her arms around her waist, gathering the material so that it bunched and puffed. “I tried. I’m still trying. I like the math. And I learned a lot of new ball skills when we started soccer, so I thought it could be good. I thought once everybody started inviting us places that it was going to work out. It would be like back home only with better stuff. But it’s not like that. If anybody texts me I have to text right back. If I blow it off, it’s a drama. They all talk about it like it’s the end of the world. I have to conference with everybody from the team at night. Arnie Nassar runs it. He’s this drill sergeant. He calls on us. We have to be like: Yeah! Soccer’s great! Yeah! School’s great! Yeah! They’re always in my room. Even my room isn’t safe. They can tell I don’t like it, so they made me into a project. I’m a challenge. They have to rehabilitate and save me. But they don’t actually care. It’s just something to do.”
“That sounds miserable.”
“If I don’t sit with them at lunch, there’s payback. My lunch goes missing. My papers get stolen. So I have to hide behind that smelly freaking beam. They’re the ones who smashed Hip’s lunch. It was payback for losing the game.
“And the lunch people—they love to pick on the loners. They’re so mad at us residents they can’t wait. They screw with my food. Like, give me half or the wrong thing and then they pretend not to hear me when I complain. I know their lives suck and everything, but they suck, too.
“One time I sat with Hip. Just for the relief, you know? Cathy freaked! Lost her mind! He gave me his green beans because he knows I like them and she was all: Why didn’t you ask me first! I’m the girlfriend! She was all afraid I was gonna steal him away from her. Like I’m gonna break them up… Hip didn’t talk to me the whole time, just to keep her happy. God forbid Cathy Bennett ever feel unhappy. She might have an anxiety explosion. And the worst part is, I have to go through all this garbage, but I’m probably not even going to wind up in a company town. Even if I got the grades and the job, I can’t stand these people. It’s for nothing.”
